Dangerous goods are substances and articles that are potentially hazardous to people and property. They may be corrosive, flammable, explosive, oxidizing or reactive with water, toxic, radioactive, etc. Whatever their properties and their potential for injury and destruction, great care is needed in their handling, storage and transport. Examples of dangerous goods are explosives, gun powder, blasting material, bombs, detonators, smokeless powder, radioactive materials, ammunition, atomic weapons, chemical compounds or any mechanical mixture containing any oxidizing and combustible units, or other ingredients in such proportions, quantities, or packing that ignite by fire, friction, concussion, percussion or detonation of any part thereof which may and is intended to cause an explosion; poisons; carcinogenic materials; caustic chemicals; hallucinogenic substances; illegal materials; drugs that are illegal to sell and/or dispense; and substances which, because of their toxicity, magnification or concentration within biological chains, present a threat to biological life when exposed to the environment, etc. All other types of goods may be considered normal goods.
The government has promulgated regulations regarding the storage, handling and shipment of dangerous goods. These Regulations are designed to prevent accidents, provide safety standards to protect workers, the community and the environment from the effects of fires, explosions and escapes of these dangerous goods.
Dangerous goods and normal goods may be shipped and stored in individual containers that may be placed in larger containers. The contents and descriptions of the goods and information pertaining to the goods in the individual containers and the contents and descriptions of the goods and information pertaining to the goods in the larger containers may be written directly on the containers and/or labels that are attached to the containers. One of the problems of the prior art was that the only way to determine the information written on the individual containers that are placed in larger containers was to remove the individual containers from the larger containers. The foregoing process is labor intensive, time consuming and expensive.
Another problem experienced by the prior art was that the information written on the containers and/or labels had to be directly scanned by optical scanners or directly viewed by humans in order to be read. An additional problem encountered by the prior art was that if many individual containers having goods were placed in a larger sealed container, someone may remove, i.e., steal some of the individual containers from the larger container and reseal the larger container without the custodian of the larger container realizing that some individual containers are missing.
Another problem of the prior art is that someone may remove an individual container from a larger sealed container and replace the removed container with a different container and then reseal the larger container without the custodian of the larger container realizing the change. This may result in a theft or dangerous goods being substituted for normal goods.
The information written on the containers and/or the information written on the labels that are attached to the containers may be written on paper and then entered into a computer. Typically, the information written on paper and/or labels is entered into computers by optically scanning the paper and/or labels. The foregoing method of entering information into computers is inconvenient, because the paper and/or label must be placed directly on the scanner, and no intervening objects may be placed between the paper and the scanner. Another method utilized by the prior art for writing information on paper and/or labels and entering the written information into a computer involved placing a piece of paper over an expensive digitizing pad and using a special pen that produced digital data by indicating the coordinates of the digitizing pad. Thus, heretofore, there was no economic, convenient way for wirelessly entering information written on plain paper, labels, and/or on containers into a computer.
Another method utilized by the prior art for entering information into a computer involved the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. The RFID tags were programmed to contain digital information either during the manufacturing of the read only memory portion of the RFID integrated circuit, or in the field using electromagnetic radio frequency signals to store information in the nonvolatile memory portion of the RFID tag. One of the difficulties involved in the utilization of RFID tags was that if an end user wanted to enter information into the RFID tag, the end user had to use a specialized device that communicated with the RFID tag through a radio frequency. Another problem involved in the utilization of RFID tags that were programmed by the manufacturer was that the end user had to share the information that was going to be programmed into the RFID tag with the manufacturer of the tag.